Angels Make Their Hope Here (25 page)

“I take the weight for losing Jan. I have not been a wholly honest man. I didn’t lie to you, but I kept the truth from you. And I was cruel to him because he knew all my secrets and I knew he’d one day love you more than me and want to tell you
about all of my sores. And I taunted him for loving you and I shamed him into bringing you home and going to war. I know I’m the one to be the caretaker of the Smoots. But I ain’t done so good all told.”

Duncan handed the infant into Dossie’s arms. It boggled his mind to think on what had happened to Jan. He knew now and was ready to admit that he had failed to save Cissy and Jan both and the weight of this great failure could only be mitigated by his complete embrace of the baby girl. Duncan Smoot is a man who has made big mistakes—eye gouging, burning and punishing, stopping or not stopping. Grandmother’s very flawed instrument. Wherefore he is Sarah’s papa? He is Sarah’s papa because she is Dossie’s daughter and he is pledged to Dossie, to Jan and to Cissy, to his mama and all of them back to Lucy Smoot, who turned her back on the barrel of a gun to free her children. He’d thought he was the pasha, the head of the clan. Perhaps his life is finally just this simple? He is the scarf on Dossie’s arm and her standard bearer and her protector. He is here to make her daughter fortunate.

He has already given her girl a sweet name. He has coined it in his head in his own private baby parlance. She is Janny—she is Jan as he had always said it with the added fillip of delight.

Is Dossie some kind of a wood witch that she has enchanted him so? Duncan studied her face and allowed himself to renew his enchantment. The beautiful favorite!

“You must promise to be a gentler man if you want us to stay.” Dossie’s voice was steady with great effort. “I will not let you chastise my girl. You must leave the switch to me. You must increase your sweetness or we will go. Jan made me
promise to make you sweeter or go away. I pledged it to him and I will not go back on this promise.”

“Dossie Bird!” Duncan exclaimed. “Where could you go? This is your home.”

“You must pledge it or we will leave Russell’s Knob,” Dossie declared and captured his eyes levelly. “Dossie is no rabbit now, Duncan Smoot. She is Mother Bear and she will be her cub’s champion.” She started to chuckle with herself. She remembered! Was it a fancy tale or a prophecy? At their winter work, Hat had poked fun at her brother’s mysterious time away, saying that he slept with she-bears in wintertime all because long, long ago Duncan had gone into a bear den in dead of winter when it was so cold they could barely catch their breath in the biting wind. Duncan, against advice, had taken a torch into the bear den. They all knew Mother Bear was inside, had taken her children and gone to sleep. He came out a day later sayin’ that he’d slept with the bear and her cubs and that they’d hardly noticed him and it was very, very warm and smelled very, very pleasant. “Everybody knows Duncan is the bear’s fancy,” Hat would finish and giggle uncontrollably. Noelle would snap her eyes and pinch Hat’s arms.

“This is your home, girl! It always has been,” Duncan declared rather than swear any specifics.

“Duncan, you are not God,” Dossie countered.

“Dossie, I pledge to be a stalwart for you and your daughter, Sarah Jane Smoot,” he pronounced pleasantly.

“Yes, Jimmer?” Dossie asked, testing him, pressing him, teasing him.

“Yes, Dossie, I swear it solemnly.”

Why, he’d torched the devil’s tail to bring her to the mountains, to the ancestors, to Jan. Even if the white men’s God had
put this mark on his register as a sin, still it will have been well done.

“Yes, Jimmer.”

Even if the Afric gods curl their lips in displeasure at his deeds and his methods, it will have been well done still. Janny, beloved Janny! Sarah Jane Smoot comes to the world!

“Yes, Jimmer Fish, it is well done!”

A work may have one author, but it needs friends and supporters to become a novel. I would like to acknowledge the deft and delicate, intelligent and beautiful touch of Terry Adams, my editor at Little, Brown and Company.

I would like to recognize the invaluable counsel, conscientious representation, and friendship of my literary agent, Cynthia Cannell, and the Cynthia Cannell Literary Agency.

Getting here is only half the battle. The battle is being here and thriving, and it needs a sister-warrior. I acknowledge my great good fortune to have Cheryl L. Clarke, poet and essayist, as my sister, my colleague, and my mentor.

B
REENA
C
LARKE
grew up in Washington, D.C., and was educated at Howard University. For
Angels Make Their Hope Here
she drew inspiration from the tales and legends of the settlers of the Ramapo Mountains, not far from her home in New Jersey. Her previous novels are
River, Cross My Heart,
which was a selection of Oprah’s Book Club, and
Stand the Storm.

River, Cross My Heart

Stand the Storm

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Copyright © 2014 by Breena Clarke

Cover design by Allison J. Warner

Cover art: landscape photograph by Duncan Walker / Getty Images; bird by Ilbusca / Getty Images; carriage by A-Digit / Getty Images

Cover copyright © 2014 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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Excerpt from
Appalachian Elegy
by bell hooks, copyright © 2012 by bell hooks.

Used with permission from The University Press of Kentucky.

ISBN 978-0-316-25399-4

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